Recollections of Forty Years Service

remember that most delightful of scents, new-mown hay, coming off the Isle of Wight. Next morning we steamed into Portsmouth Harbour, the people coming down to the entrance and about the Old Quebec Hotel, waving handkerchiefs and any other drapery handy, and cheering in grand style as the ship moved past. On landing the regiment was sent up to Aldershot to be reviewed with many others by the Queen. A miserable place that same Aldershot was in those days, and having no mess, the difficulty was to get anything at all to eat. The one regular regiment there ?the Queen's, I think?could not possibly feed every one, and the foreign legions quartered at the camp did not apparently understand the manners and customs of the English army. Certainly there was no love lost between them and the rest of the force. I remember my servant got some bread and cheese for me from one of the canteens near, but I had eventually to go to London for a square meal. The review over, the regiment was sent down to Portsmouth and quartered on board the Britannia, an old three-decker, till barracks were ready. At that time convicts worked in the dockyard, and one of their hulks lay at almost speaking distance from the Britannia. Later on orders came for us to go to the Curragh. I got permission to go overland, thereby managing to get two or three days' leave to see my relatives, then at Welton. A more dreary quarter for a lot of young fellows than the Curragh in those days could hardly be ...